If you haven't watched this and want to avoid spoilers, please refrain from proceeding further with this post.
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Perhaps I should begin with the things which I disliked.
Top off the bat would be the main match games. I thought that The Genius was already complicated enough but The Devil's Plan seemed to take this a notch higher. The irony was, the games in the final actually turned out to be easier to understand. One key element contributing to me enjoying The Genius series was the a-ha moments - when you realise the trick to winning and actually understand the rationale. The thing is, the games in this season were so endlessly complicated that I just gave up trying to comprehend the logic.
While I get it that the production team had to make the games challenging enough for this pool of players since many of them were from top-notch universities or very smart, I wonder if viewers feel the same about the difficulty levels of the games as the explanation of the game rules went on and on until I completely lost the plot. When I don't even understand how the game works, watching how it progressed didn't feel as engaging to me. In contrast, the death matches in the prison were more interesting to watch.
To be honest, matches which rely on having the most number of allies to win are not so fun to watch especially if the alliances are tight and players do not betray or switch sides for their own interests. That is probably why I prefer watching the 1-on-1 matches where people fight for themselves with their own skills. However, when people band together to gang up on others in games which are supposedly meant to be 1-on-1, that gets on my nerves because it spoils the opportunity for people to win on their terms.
One other thing which really infuriated me was the double standards and hypocrisy displayed by some players who couldn't decide whether to be a saint or devil and/or applied differing standards to themselves and others. In the very first game where people took on roles and had to deceive others to win, I simply don't get the rationale of Kang Ji-young getting mad at Kyuhyun for doing what he was supposed to do by lying to his team. Just on what grounds are you entitled to hold a grudge against him for playing the game as he should? And if Kyuhyun double-crossed his hidden team, wouldn't viewers pounce on him for trying too hard to maintain a wholesome persona as an idol? No matter which route he chose, he would have gotten criticism. As he said in the beginning, he didn't want to behave like he usually did as an idol, host and singer - he just wanted to immerse himself as a player in this game. In view of this, I applaud his courage to do what he wanted to instead of worrying about how he might be perceived for lying to others.
As for Ji-young, there were a number of her actions which also bothered me. Accepting Se-dol's offer to swap places when he actually didn't do any wrong to you? - isn't that because you were reluctant to go to prison in the first place? Then why was Hyun-gyu in the wrong for saying aloud that he didn't want to do the same? I'm sure none of the players, if given a choice, would want to go to prison voluntarily. Or how about claiming to want to save Justin and crying over his impending loss but not actually doing anything to help him other than keep racking up points to save yourself from losing pieces? I would have given her more credit for wanting to save herself first before thinking of others - isn't that what we are told to do in the aircraft safety videos shown before flights take off?
When people hold others to high standards and expect unwavering loyalty from others but are lenient with themselves in the name of self-preservation, that just reeks of double standards. Isn't that why some of the players switched sides halfway or last-minute instead of what they proclaimed or promised at first but still had the audacity to come down hard on who did the same thing? How about switching allegiances in a flip-flop manner to plead with the people you were playing against moments ago just because you were desperate to survive? Or how about when Justin was "betrayed" when he proposed an alliance at first to eliminate Sang-yeon but found three of his supposed teammates ganging up against him and the clueless Se-dol?
And there is a difference between being singled out to be ganged up against by a group vs. choosing to go solo or having to do so inevitably due to the way the game was designed. Se-dol and Justin had to be left out because the game required people to be in groups of 3 and there were only two of them left after all the groups were formed. And there were times in other games when they chose to play on their own terms rather than be part of alliances. This was definitely different from a group of people coming together and deciding beforehand who they want to target for whatever reason.
Oh, before I forget, those who shed tears or looked so sad when someone they had a hand in eliminating left the game - that was downright off-putting. Like Ha Seok-jin said before in Season 1, he couldn't comprehend why such people had the cheek to cry when they did what they did. I cannot understand this kind of behaviour too. People getting eliminated is part of this game. You can feel sad about your allies leaving but seriously, bawling your eyes out is so fake especially when you are the one who brought about the other party's downfall. Especially if that target is from the opposite alliance or someone who you supposedly have no positive feelings for.
In that sense, while some may criticise Hyun-gyu for being ruthless and unfeeling, I applaud him for the fact that he was honest about his ambition and consistent with his actions from the beginning. He was in this show to win the game so making friends with the other players and showing who he really is - that's something he would rather do in the real world. Of course, he could have been a lot more tactful and respectful in how he interacted with the players during the game period but if he had wavered from his stance and gone back and forth, I might have viewed him as being unreal and inconsistent. His emotions and tears were reserved for those closest to him - I only remember him getting emotional when Kyuhyun left. So he's not without emotions but he just doesn't dispense it freely and openly to anyone. Just like how he treated the other girls coldly who expressed interest in him on "EXchange" when he only had eyes for Hae-eun - you can either interpret this as being clear about boundaries or plain rude.
On this topic of consistency and loyalty, I chuckled when Hyun-joon kept asking Hyun-gyu and So-hee what was it that bonded them and Kyuhyun so tightly together. I mean, it felt like he was obviously envious of their bond and wondered how they could believe in one another and have one another's back even when faced with the prospect of their own interests being sacrificed. Wanting to survive by all means is not shameful in this game. What I found irritating was trying to justify the legitimacy of the desire to win as the underdogs standing up against an unfair power balance or being self-righteous about it.
Besides the time the trio spent together in the living quarters and playing the main matches together, my guess is that the reason for the faith they had in one another was because they never deviated from what they promised. Otherwise, someone as guarded as Hyun-gyu who said from the start that he wasn't in the game to make friends and wanted to do as he wished wouldn't tell them the secret about his win in the special stage at such an early juncture of the game. If he ever felt that they would betray him, I don't think he would have shared this piece of information voluntarily. He certainly wasn't obliged to tell anyone to begin with and could have kept his cards close to his chest. And to be honest, Kyuhyun and So-hee could have done something to save their own skins with this piece of intelligence at any time. So for Hyun-joon to keep asking about this - it just came across as really ridiculous to me and contrasted with the prison group who kept saying that they were together as one but when it came to the crunch, the human nature to fend for ourselves came through. Nothing wrong with this at all but I really didn't like how they tried to put themselves on a higher moral pedestal than the other side.
As for Kyuhyun and So-hee switching to support Hyun-gyu in that game when he was initially lined up with Hyun-joon, I don't think it's because they went back on their word out of plain loyalty towards Hyun-gyu. The problem was, they initially agreed to play with the prison group under the assumption that Hyun-gyu had a partner in Hyun-joon so that the playing ground was more or less level. However, when Hyun-joon betrayed Hyun-gyu, the circumstances changed and they couldn't watch their longtime ally be pushed into a corner like this. If it had been that Hyun-joon stayed faithful to Hyun-gyu in the game but Kyuhyun and So-hee still switched sides OR Hyun-gyu's gameplay resulted in his own downfall but Kyuhyun and So-hee still jumped in blindly to save him, then there is reason to criticise their switch.
As for talk about Kyuhyun and So-hee effectively handing over the win to Hyun-gyu, I think both the living quarters and prison groups did behave in a similar manner. "If I can't win it, I would want someone in my alliance to go all the way and win it". That's probably why Kyuhyun and 7high did what they did - Kyuhyun could have saved himself by not switching over to Hyun-gyu's side but he probably knew and felt that the latter could win it in the end. Rather than him pushing through and eventually losing, he would have been happier to let Hyun-gyu move on as compared to having someone from the prison group win it.
Likewise, a strong force propelling the prison group was to "take revenge" on the privileged living quarters' group. As such, rather than let Hyun-gyu have his way and sail to No.1 in the semi-final round with no surprises, 7high would rather upset the power balance with his own elimination and let So-hee be No.1 while making Hyun-gyu go to prison (albeit for a few hours only) and face Hyun-joon in the death match. However, if he truly wanted Hyun-joon to make it to the final, he could have considered the other option (despite not knowing the nature of the last death match) although I think that So-hee would also have given Hyun-joon a tough fight like what Hyun-gyu did. Nonetheless, the thought of getting back at Hyun-gyu for whatever he did previously made choosing him rather than So-hee for prison a more attractive option to 7high. As such, I think both sides operated with the same mentality so to blame Kyu-hyun and So-hee for this, it is unfair. And it's also disrespectful to Hyun-gyu whose performance showed how much and well he had done throughout the whole game period to get the final win. If he had done nothing to pull his weight in the alliance and deserve his place in the final, then you might have reason to say that he rode on the tails of Kyuhyun and So-hee to win.
I usually like to support the underdogs who in this case, should be the prison gang. In Season 1, Seok-jin may have been a smart and skillful player but he was against the odds of Orbit's huge alliance which had an advantage in games where the majority could sway the outcome. As such, I rooted for Seok-jin because he was able to overcome that numbers disadvantage, played diligently so as to embody the game's spirit and winning it solely based on skill and in a relatively clean manner. The problem was, I didn't like how the prison group in this season played or simply blamed their circumstances on the other side. It was true that the prison system didn't allow for upward mobility in an easy way. You either needed a huge stroke of luck + a big breakthrough i.e. the special stage to turn the tables or had to do extremely well in the main games to change your fate. The thing is, the prison gang could also have banded together to fight against those in the living quarters for the main matches but personal agendas always took precedence instead of group interests. When these unexpected strayers acted up, it was no wonder that the strongly-bonded living quarters alliance managed to be dominant for a long time. If not for the way the game system was designed to make their alliance "lose" players to the prison with each episode, the prison group might not have a chance at all to put up a decent fight in the later stages of the game. Actually, compared to the first season where there were only 2 sent to the prison each time, the fact that the prison group was maintained at a certain size each time gave them the chance of being able to take advantage of numbers to turn the tables. However, it was not meant to be.
As for the so-called unfairness between the special stages in the living quarters and prison, I thought that it actually made a lot of sense. Think of it this way, the living quarters and prison are meant to mirror the real society where social inequality exists. So for the "rich", survival is not an issue and anything that is a bonus to them is just an extra to enhance the advantage that they already enjoy thanks to their social position. On the other hand, those already struggling need to fight tooth and nail to survive and change their fates. This is probably why Hyun-gyu was not faced with the prospect of elimination while Hyun-joon was literally placed in a situation where if he did not crack the code, he would "die" - both in the game and being drowned by that water in the well. However, it did not mean that Hyun-gyu sailed through with no difficulty because he did spend a lot of time and effort in preparing for the game beforehand and I must say, the game in the living quarters was definitely more challenging than the one in the prison especially the third round which he did not manage to prepare for. While the prison version of the special stage was comparatively easier especially if the player is good at English or is a native speaker, the conditions which Hyun-joon was put under certainly helped to raise the difficulty because when the water was filling up, the time pressure would make it more difficult for him to think properly and react calmly. If not for this, I think viewers would then criticise the prison version as being too simple and awarding a prize not proportional to its difficulty level when compared to the living quarters' version. The significance of the prizes while the same in terms of amount, also had a slightly different meaning. For Hyun-joon, the 10 pieces gave him a chance to enjoy a change in fate and be a force to be reckoned with but for Hyun-gyu, the 10 pieces could have taken on an entirely different meaning if he had used the extra pieces as added advantage to sail through to the final or get some edge in the final rather than to avoid being sent to prison and deal an emotional blow to the prison group who thought that they won the game.
What I really liked about Season 2 was a notable absence of free-riders or those who believed that you can survive just by riding on the tails of the strong players and not pulling your weight in the team. The Orbit alliance was a huge letdown in Season 1 so to see the players this time fighting so hard and being more aware of what they needed to do was good. The benefit of hindsight and preparation definitely shows up here. Of course, for the production team, to see the special stages being cracked so early was a letdown for them.
If you aren't in this to win it, you probably shouldn't even come to participate. What the Season 2 players brought to the table was not just a stronger awareness (which most of the Season 1 players were unable to benefit from since they didn't know what to expect but there were still some who were more proactive and observant) and desire to win but the willingness to pull your weight to contribute to the team. This was definitely more apparent in the living quarters group where they played their own roles depending on their capabilities. For example, while some may argue that So-hee's approach may seem to be rather passive and was being led around by others in her team or playing second fiddle to Hyun-gyu, the thing is, her knowledge and intelligence were pivotal in helping the team become successful and she definitely made it to the final in a convincing manner.
The part about having hidden rules was actually fine with me because in life, nobody tells you everything you need to get ahead and win so you do have to figure things out on your own. As such, the players who were more observant, paid more attention to details, quick to adapt and think out of the box managed to thrive more than the others. You've got to give them credit for those abilities rather than say that it was unfair to have these hidden rules in the first place.
As for Hyun-gyu's win, some may take offense with his bluntness and ruthlessness in his fixation to win and say that he did not deserve to win but in terms of TV entertainment, I would rather watch a "complete villain" rather than a "half-baked hypocritical saint". I think most people do like underdog stories and the fact that he never stayed in prison throughout the week and didn't actually "suffer" before unlike people like Eun-yu made it difficult for viewers to see him in a more positive light. Hyun-gyu getting a fair bit of hate towards the end by the other players and being singled out for that reason also put him at a disadvantage at times especially when most of his allies except So-hee were gone. On the other hand, So-hee's role as another key brainy member of the alliance while not sticking out too much helped to make the other side's perception of her a lot more positive.
While I do not like the actions which some of the players including Hyun-gyu did, I see them as necessary evils that had to be done within the context and parameters of this game. As such, whatever I was unhappy about or didn't like to see was about the behaviour and actions in the show rather than the individuals as a whole. As what Hyun-joon remarked, the players went through drastic transformations once they were in the game arena despite being really nice people in the living quarters or prison or in real life. As such, I feel that I need to constantly remind myself that this is just a game show and these people were put in extreme conditions. Who's to say that we won't act more drastically or extremely than what these people did? Since the prize money has got nothing to do with me anyway and whoever wins it doesn't affect my life, I'll be content to take on the role as an observer and develop my own take on the situation while try not to get too hung up over whatever happened.
As for the final, I think So-hee did have a good chance to win in the last round and would have been a deserving winner as well. However, due to the stalemate they had, the decisions they made led to the outcome. I don't think So-hee's decision was wrong but she is somewhat more of one who plays safe rather than go big with risky decisions. She was sure that she could give the correct answer by skipping one round and making sure she could win the right to answer while waiting for another 2 free tokens. Then again, Hyun-gyu isn't reckless as well and I think his strong mental strength worked for him. Under such stressful conditions, if you get the answer wrong once, it would have dealt a strong emotional blow to anyone. So-hee also probably underestimated Hyun-gyu a bit because he looked unsure of his answer. If Hyun-gyu had backed down on wagering his tokens, he might not have the chance to give his answer first so credit goes to him for having the guts to press on. And since the fight between them was so tight, I thought that the final in this season was more exciting to watch than the last season.
As they say, history is history.
If this show is to ever make a comeback...my wish is to see even more aggressive players and gameplay. And games which favour personal skills rather than strength in numbers are definitely my preference. Ultimately, there's only one winner so it doesn't make sense to keep having such games. While I don't deny that the social aspect of such games is important, going solo or keeping your core alliance small as you deem fit shouldn't be penalised.
Likewise, if you want to go down the path of the devil, be brutal and honest about it. It's not easy though because public perception is a key consideration for the cast, no matter whether you are a celebrity to begin with. And some negative comments can get downright abusive so I understand if the players are apprehensive about doing things in the Hyun-gyu style. If only viewers can see this type of show as "whatever happens in the game stays in the game" and "what you see is only a fraction of that individual's life and character in an extreme setting", we might be able to enjoy this better.
And to the production team - please make the games a bit easier to understand or do something about the complicated ways you try to explain the rules. Or at least, explain in bits at appropriate junctures rather than go on and on endlessly.
One last thing to note, there are some bonus clips at the end of the credits for some episodes but it's easy to miss them because Netflix's default option is to skip to the next episode when the credits roll. Unless you are aware beforehand or have the habit to scroll through the credits, chances are, you would miss them.
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